Nietzsche, Polytheism and Parody

Bulletin de la Sociiti Amhicaine de Philosophie de Langue Franrais Volume 14} Number 2} Fall 2004 Nietzsehe, Polytheism and Parody Pierre I<lossowski Parody and polytheism in Nietzsche? At first sight, it is not at all clear what relation exists between these two terms, nor what kind oE concerns would lead one to speak oE them, nor what interest one n1ight have in raising such a question. If for most people Nietzsche's name is inseparable from the utterance God is dead, then it may seem surprising to speak of the religion of many gods with regard to Nietzsche. After all, there are countless people today for whom Nietzsche's name signifies nothing more than this utterance-and they did not need Nietzsche to know that all the gods are dead. It mayaiso seem, perhaps, that I am simply using Nietzsche to demonstrate the existence of many gods and to legitimate polytheism; and, by playing on these words, I will not escape the reproach, under the pretext of showing the meaning of parody in Nietzsche, of making a parody of myself and thus of parodying Nietzsche. If I must open myself to such confusion, I would nevertheless like to make one thing clear: insofar as one is lead to interpret the thought of a mind [eprit] that one tries to comprehend and make comprehensible, there is no one who leads his interpreter to parody him as much as Nietzsche. 82 NIETZSCHE, POLYTHEISM, AND PARODY This is true not only of those interpreters who are smitten with his thought, but also those who try hard to refute him as a dangerous spirit. Nietzsche himself urged one of his first interpreters-no one had yet spoken of hirn-to abandon all pathos, not to take sides in his favor, and to put up a sort of ironic resistance when characterizing him. Here, then, we cannot avoid being the victim of a sort of ruse, nor can we avoid falling into the trap inherent in Nietzsche's own experience and thought. Unless we simply undertake the work of the historian, as Andler did,l the moment we try to elucidate Nietzsche's thought, he is always made to say more than he says and less than he says. This is not-as is often the case with other thinkers--due to a simple lack of perspective or even because a determinate point of departure has been omitted. In assimilating Nietzsche, we make him say more than he says, while in rejecting or altering him, we make rum say less than he says-for the simple reason that, properly speaking, with Nietzsche there is hardly either a point of departure or a precise terminus. Nietzsche's contemporaries and friends were able to follow an evolution from The Birth of Tragedy to The Wanderer and His Shadow and on to The Gqy Science) and from Zarathustra to The Twilight of the Idols. But those of us who have at our disposal the youthful writings as weil as the posthumous work, includingEcce Homo, have not only been able to follow the ramifications of Nietzsche's posterity, and to witness the accusations made against Nietzsche as a result of recent historical upheavals, but have also been able to discern something which, I think, is not without importance: Nietzsche, who was despite everything a professor of philology at Basel, and thus an academic with absolutely certain pedagogical ambitions, did not develop a philosophy. Instead, outside of the framework of the university, Nietzsche developed variations on a personal then1e. Living a simple life marked by extreme suffering and convalescence, forced to sojourn with increasing frequency at health resorts, while in the midst of the greatest intellectual isolation, Nietzsche was thereby abandoned, in the most 83 PIERRE I<LOSSOWSI<I auspicious manner, to listen to himself alone [d sa seule audition]. This academic, trained in the disciplines of science in order to teach and train others, found himself compeiled to teach the unteachable. What is unteachable are those moments when existence, escaping from the delimitations that produce the notions of history and morality, as weil as the practical behavior derived from them, is shown to be given back to itself with no other goal than that of returning to itself. All things then appear at once new and quite old; everything is possible and everything is immediately impossible; and there are only two courses open to consciousness: either to keep silent, or to speak; either to do nothing, or to act so as to imprint on one's everyday quotidian ambiance the character of existence given back to itself; either to lose itself in existence or to reproduce it. Nietzsche had immediately attained this unteachable in his own solitude, through his own idiosyncrasies-that is, by descnbing himse!f as a convalescent who had suffered from the unresolvecl nihilism of his own era and who had resolved this nihilism, to the point where he was able to restore to the notion offatum its fuil force. He had grasped the very ground of existence, lived as fortuitous-that is, he had grasped that aspect of existence which, through hirn, was fortuitously named Nietzsche. In this way, he had also grasped the necessity of accepting this fortuitous situation as his own destiny (in the sense he ascribes to this word), which amounts to a decision to affirm the existence of a universe that has no other end than that of being what it iso Nietzsche recognized this apprehension of existence-which is nothing other than the apprehension of eternity-in the simulacra of art and religion, but he also saw that this n10de of apprehension is perpetually denied by scientific activity, which explores existence through its tangible forms in order to construct a practicable and livable world. Nonetheless, Nietzsche feIt a solidarity with both these attitudes toward existence: that of simulacra, as weil as that of science, which declares fiat ventas pereat vita. 2 84 NIETZSCHE, POLYTHEISM, AND PARODY Andso heputsimulacra into seienee and saenee into simulacra: in sueh a wqy that the seientist ean sqy: ''Qualis artifexpereo!'3 Nietzsehe was prey to an inelucidable revelation of existence that did not know how to express itself except through song and image. A struggle was being waged within him between the poet and the scholar, between the visionary and the moralist, each of which was trying to disqualify the role of the other. This struggle was provoked by a feeling of moral responsibility toward his contemporaries. The different tendencies, the different attitudes that were fighting over Nietzsche's consciousness would endure until a crucial event was produced: Nietzsehe would be externalized in a character, a veritable dramatis persona: Zarathustra-a character who is not only the product of a fictive redoubling, but is in some way achallenge by Nietzsehe the visionary to Nietzsehe the professor and man of letters. The character of Zarathustra has a complex function: on the one hand, he is the Christ, as Nietzsehe secretly and jealously understands him; but on the other hand, insofar as he is the Accuser of the traditional Christ, he is the one who prepares the way for the advent of Dionysus philosophos. The years during which Thus Spoke Zarathustra was fashioned, and especially those that followed its birth, were for Nietzsehe astate of unparalleled distress: One pays dearly for immortality: one has to die several times while still alive. There is something that I call the rancor of what is great: everything great-a work, a deed-is no sooner accomplished than it turns against the man who clid it. By doing it, he has become weak; he no longer endures his deed, he can no longer face it. Something one was never permitted to will lies behind one, something in which the knot in the destiny of humanity is tied-and now one labors under itI-It almost crushes one... 4 85 PIERRE KLOSSOWSI<I Zarathustra, to be sure, was latent in the previous works, but what is important for Nietzsche's life is not only the creation and presence of the ineffable songs ofthe poem. What came to be determinant for Nietzsche's life was the more or less complete identification of Nietzsche with this physiognorny, which for him constituted a kind of promise, a resurrection, an ascension. In a certain sense, Zarathustra is the star of which Nietzsche hirnself is only the satellite. Even better, I would say that Nietzsche, after having paved the way for the triumph of Zarathustra, remains behind in a position sacrificed in the course of a victorious retreat. As he hirnself said, he would pay dearly for this creation. Zarathustra prefigures Nietzsche's own immortality-that immortality by which one dies more than once while still alive. When Nietzsche managed to separate Zarathustra from hirnself, and was therebyable to encounter him as a superior but still inaccessible reality, then the world of appearances-which, according to the divine fable, was created in six days-disappeared along with the true world; for in six days the true world became a fable once again. Nietzsche casts a retrospective glance at this re-fabulation of the true world that disappears in six days, or six periods, which are the inverse of the six days of the world's creation. It is this re-fabulation that he traces out in an aphorism of The Twilight of the Idols entitled "How the True World' Final!J Became a Fable." Here is the passage: 1. The true world-attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it.

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